Do you conversely see any particular actions you take, which, if generalized, create a situation in which people’s right would be violated, or certain harms would result?
I'm sorry. I thought we already hammered out "negative rights" and how I know that I have obligations to not violate them.
The problem is that I am under the impression that I am meeting all of my obligations to not violate your negative rights, right now.
(Rights not limited to the examples I am about to give.)
I am not limiting your freedom of speech, nor your freedom of peaceful assembly, nor your right to worship (or not worship) God(s) as you are inclined to, nor am I quartered in your house, nor am I violating your right to privacy.
I'm pleased to say that, as far as I can tell, you're respecting *MY* negative rights.
Awesome.
It's when we get to my positive obligations to you that I start wondering exactly what they happen to be and how I can best meet them.
From where I sit, it seems to be as simple as public declaration. (It'd kinda have to be, given that we're two folk on the internet)
So, ignorance does not excuse you from honoring a moral obligation, it is still an obligation that went unmet.
This is why I'm trying to end my ignorance.
What obligations am I leaving unmet?
You telling me that I have reason and can figure this stuff out for myself is a help until I say "well, they're all met!" and you point out that ignorance is no excuse for my failure to meet my obligations to Cecily Miller in Akron, Ohio.
It’s not like you’re incapable of making these determinations on your own.
From my perspective, I'm meeting every single obligation that I have. That's the determination that I've made. There may be a handful of cans I've kicked down the road (vacuuming the basement, for example) and some more obligations I've amortized (my mortgage, for example) but it seems to me that I've met every single positive obligation that others have toward me at this particular moment.
But it seems that the focus is almost exclusively on the various obligations that "we" get to ask "them" to do.
Here are a handful of things that I wonder... do "they" get to ask things of "us"?
Let's say that "we" are getting subsidized health care. Can "they" ask us to exercise more? Eat better? Quit smoking? Drink less?
Or that "we" are partaking in the social safety net. Can "they" ask that we use protection when we have sex? Or that we pass a drug test in order to qualify for continued benefits?
Do "we" have any obligation to those who are giving stuff to "us"?
Or, I suppose, vice versa?
Because it seems to me that when I lived under my parents' roof, they had something akin to a right to tell me how to live. What about when more and different people are paying for my roof?
Well, we're talking about my obligations to you and your obligations to me and our obligations to everybody else and everybody else's obligations to us.
To be perfectly honest, this very much seems like everybody is up in everybody's business.
I'm one of those crazy people who believes in a "Right to Privacy" and, as such, the idea that all y'all have positive obligations to me beyond merely not getting all up in my business creeps me out.
How much of your life am I entitled to know about?
(Please understand, I think that I am entitled to know damn near nothing about you... but if you volunteer the info, that's totally cool and thank you for that. And the same for me.)
We are now in completely different parts of the country (I assume, anyway) and it seems to me that my obligations to you are completely and entirely *MET*.
If they are not, I'd like to know which ones I am not meeting.
For the record, I can't think of any obligations that you have to me that you aren't meeting.
That we were sold health care coverage in the guise of being promised health care.
The current reality is that a handful of very small but powerful sectors of the economy have inordinate amounts of power. Do you deny that?
Not at all. I'm in support of decentralizing that power, actually. Lowering barriers to entry, that sort of thing.
If not, how is it the fault of congress that having to accommodate them is necessary to advance the ball?
Because was was being sold was not accomodation to insurance companies but health care for people who cannot afford it... stuff like "Look at Canada!" and "Look at Denmark!" was used as an argument in response to why we needed this bill when, at the end of the day, this bill makes us nothing like Canada or Denmark.
I am familiar with the general utilitarian argument (and with some of its historical misapplications) but I don't know which of Peter Singer's thought experiments you mean.
The "by sacrificing our luxuries, we could save the lives of children" thought experiment?
Would I be allowed to ask questions like "How many children could have been helped with the health care that an additional $15k in the system would have been able to provide?" or is that completely different and doesn't take into account the stuff that happens in practice rather than some idealized theory about resource allocation?
And did Congress pass a law making us more like Canada and Western Europe?
Did congress make us more like one of those actually functioning health care systems that work?
Or did Congress collude with lobbyists to give one hell of a giveaway to corporations from citizens?
Remember, Greg: We're not going to get health care from the system that your intentions envisioned. We're going to get health care coverage from insurance companies that wrote the law that Congress passed.
And pointing at Western Europe will not change that we are going to get health care coverage from insurance companies that wrote the law that Congress passed.
Greg, I've said, again and again, that if you want more health care that there are ways to do that. I've written essays. I can repost them for you to ignore again, if you'd like.
On the other hand, I have seen essays accusing those who oppose Congress colluding with lobbyists of allowing children to die. Do you want links? I have them. (One's even to this very site!) When I cry "what about the children?", it's not mocking arguments that haven't been tossed about but arguments that have been given in support of Congress colluding with lobbyists.
But, hey. At least the Progressives get to feel warm and fuzzy when they accuse the "enemy" of not caring about The Children, right?
Because it doesn't matter what you do. It only matters that you *CARE*. Screw that. I'd rather callous and indifferent resulting in better health than caring resulting in regression to the mean.
The problem is that the Progressives completely forget about regulatory capture and they see something like Congress's Affordable Care Act and they cheer about finally being on the road to Single Payer when, no, they've just colluded with corporations to transfer money from the Citizenry to the Private Sector while screaming that the people who don't want this to happen want The Children to die.
What drives me nuts is that he replied to me and how it completely and totally missed the point of the post *AND* also completely misunderstands what a "hypocrite" is.
It's, like, the quintessential unearthing of a thread. It adds nothing to chew on, it fails to apprehend the post its responding to, and it screws up even on its own terms.
Personally, I'm curious as to how in the heck he got here, of all places, in the first place. Surely there are more recent posts that could have him complain about Catholicism! Surely!
Yes, you should be out in the private or public sector and we should be complaining about how it's a shame that you don't feel like you can go back to graduate school because of how little you're paid.
"Congressman, the earth still trembles from the damage done from the hydrogen bombs dropped on volcanoes 75 million years ago. We need to address this critical issue for The Children."
On “Incoherent Democracy, Again”
Do you conversely see any particular actions you take, which, if generalized, create a situation in which people’s right would be violated, or certain harms would result?
I'm sorry. I thought we already hammered out "negative rights" and how I know that I have obligations to not violate them.
The problem is that I am under the impression that I am meeting all of my obligations to not violate your negative rights, right now.
(Rights not limited to the examples I am about to give.)
I am not limiting your freedom of speech, nor your freedom of peaceful assembly, nor your right to worship (or not worship) God(s) as you are inclined to, nor am I quartered in your house, nor am I violating your right to privacy.
I'm pleased to say that, as far as I can tell, you're respecting *MY* negative rights.
Awesome.
It's when we get to my positive obligations to you that I start wondering exactly what they happen to be and how I can best meet them.
From where I sit, it seems to be as simple as public declaration. (It'd kinda have to be, given that we're two folk on the internet)
"
So, ignorance does not excuse you from honoring a moral obligation, it is still an obligation that went unmet.
This is why I'm trying to end my ignorance.
What obligations am I leaving unmet?
You telling me that I have reason and can figure this stuff out for myself is a help until I say "well, they're all met!" and you point out that ignorance is no excuse for my failure to meet my obligations to Cecily Miller in Akron, Ohio.
"
If I do not know that I have an obligation to you to X, I do not know how it can be said that I have an obligation to you to X.
Indeed, the phrase "you are obliged to me!" seems to be inaccurate for a lot of the positive obligations posited.
Discussion of hypothetical children in hypothetical water notwithstanding.
"
It’s not like you’re incapable of making these determinations on your own.
From my perspective, I'm meeting every single obligation that I have. That's the determination that I've made. There may be a handful of cans I've kicked down the road (vacuuming the basement, for example) and some more obligations I've amortized (my mortgage, for example) but it seems to me that I've met every single positive obligation that others have toward me at this particular moment.
That's my determination.
How wrong am I?
"
So how can I know whether I'm meeting my obligations or not?
Is it something as simple as singing the doxology after the offering (or otherwise repeating sentences by rote when called upon to do so)?
"
So it's an odd prime?
On “Defending teachers from the noise machine”
(I got what you were doing, North)
On “On Free Markets”
But it seems that the focus is almost exclusively on the various obligations that "we" get to ask "them" to do.
Here are a handful of things that I wonder... do "they" get to ask things of "us"?
Let's say that "we" are getting subsidized health care. Can "they" ask us to exercise more? Eat better? Quit smoking? Drink less?
Or that "we" are partaking in the social safety net. Can "they" ask that we use protection when we have sex? Or that we pass a drug test in order to qualify for continued benefits?
Do "we" have any obligation to those who are giving stuff to "us"?
Or, I suppose, vice versa?
Because it seems to me that when I lived under my parents' roof, they had something akin to a right to tell me how to live. What about when more and different people are paying for my roof?
"
Well, we're talking about my obligations to you and your obligations to me and our obligations to everybody else and everybody else's obligations to us.
To be perfectly honest, this very much seems like everybody is up in everybody's business.
I'm one of those crazy people who believes in a "Right to Privacy" and, as such, the idea that all y'all have positive obligations to me beyond merely not getting all up in my business creeps me out.
How much of your life am I entitled to know about?
(Please understand, I think that I am entitled to know damn near nothing about you... but if you volunteer the info, that's totally cool and thank you for that. And the same for me.)
We are now in completely different parts of the country (I assume, anyway) and it seems to me that my obligations to you are completely and entirely *MET*.
If they are not, I'd like to know which ones I am not meeting.
For the record, I can't think of any obligations that you have to me that you aren't meeting.
"
What’s your complaint here?
That we were sold health care coverage in the guise of being promised health care.
The current reality is that a handful of very small but powerful sectors of the economy have inordinate amounts of power. Do you deny that?
Not at all. I'm in support of decentralizing that power, actually. Lowering barriers to entry, that sort of thing.
If not, how is it the fault of congress that having to accommodate them is necessary to advance the ball?
Because was was being sold was not accomodation to insurance companies but health care for people who cannot afford it... stuff like "Look at Canada!" and "Look at Denmark!" was used as an argument in response to why we needed this bill when, at the end of the day, this bill makes us nothing like Canada or Denmark.
"
I am familiar with the general utilitarian argument (and with some of its historical misapplications) but I don't know which of Peter Singer's thought experiments you mean.
The "by sacrificing our luxuries, we could save the lives of children" thought experiment?
Would I be allowed to ask questions like "How many children could have been helped with the health care that an additional $15k in the system would have been able to provide?" or is that completely different and doesn't take into account the stuff that happens in practice rather than some idealized theory about resource allocation?
"
This law did?
Knock me over with a feather.
I thought that stuff didn't really start happening until 2014.
healthcare.gov/law/timeline/index.html
That website doesn't say a lot of what's, apparently, going on.
"
So this bill helped you, then?
Or are you counting on it helping you in the future if something like this happens again?
"
Who measures the detriment?
How would she measure it?
"
I probably am going to die someday. I don't know when, though.
"
Which of my obligations to you am I failing to meet right now, E.C.?
For the record, I think I feel pretty safe in saying that I am meeting all of my "negative" ones.
Which of your obligations to me are you failing to meet, right now?
"
And did Congress pass a law making us more like Canada and Western Europe?
Did congress make us more like one of those actually functioning health care systems that work?
Or did Congress collude with lobbyists to give one hell of a giveaway to corporations from citizens?
Remember, Greg: We're not going to get health care from the system that your intentions envisioned. We're going to get health care coverage from insurance companies that wrote the law that Congress passed.
And pointing at Western Europe will not change that we are going to get health care coverage from insurance companies that wrote the law that Congress passed.
"
Greg, I've said, again and again, that if you want more health care that there are ways to do that. I've written essays. I can repost them for you to ignore again, if you'd like.
On the other hand, I have seen essays accusing those who oppose Congress colluding with lobbyists of allowing children to die. Do you want links? I have them. (One's even to this very site!) When I cry "what about the children?", it's not mocking arguments that haven't been tossed about but arguments that have been given in support of Congress colluding with lobbyists.
But, hey. At least the Progressives get to feel warm and fuzzy when they accuse the "enemy" of not caring about The Children, right?
Because it doesn't matter what you do. It only matters that you *CARE*. Screw that. I'd rather callous and indifferent resulting in better health than caring resulting in regression to the mean.
At the end of the day, feelings don't mean crap.
"
They do.
The problem is that the Progressives completely forget about regulatory capture and they see something like Congress's Affordable Care Act and they cheer about finally being on the road to Single Payer when, no, they've just colluded with corporations to transfer money from the Citizenry to the Private Sector while screaming that the people who don't want this to happen want The Children to die.
On “Education and Entertainment; University and Community”
This is actual evidence of the liberal bias in academia! If they wanted balance, they would have also brought it... wait for it...
Teabaggers.
THANK YOU !
On “Gary Johnson 2012”
What drives me nuts is that he replied to me and how it completely and totally missed the point of the post *AND* also completely misunderstands what a "hypocrite" is.
It's, like, the quintessential unearthing of a thread. It adds nothing to chew on, it fails to apprehend the post its responding to, and it screws up even on its own terms.
Personally, I'm curious as to how in the heck he got here, of all places, in the first place. Surely there are more recent posts that could have him complain about Catholicism! Surely!
On “liberal scholarship (a digression)”
Yes, you should be out in the private or public sector and we should be complaining about how it's a shame that you don't feel like you can go back to graduate school because of how little you're paid.
On “Why don’t we treat free trade like global warming?”
I can't tell if you're making a pretty funny joke or not so I'll treat your statement as if it were earnest:
I thought it was Hobbes who made life so difficult for the third-worlders on down.
"
"Congressman, the earth still trembles from the damage done from the hydrogen bombs dropped on volcanoes 75 million years ago. We need to address this critical issue for The Children."
"
For some reason she was sitting in front of Congress reading off of a paper.
At least it wasn't Bono.